[Muromec]

pdf signatures are certainly not worth nothing, in fact they are eIDAS compliant. It's just the government being the government so it's left hand doesn't trust the right one.

What eIDAS actually solves is not signatures, but strong identification. You log into the system and it knows your tax id or whatever primary identifier you have. It's promoted as a secure way to sign documents, but it's just technofetishism.

Non-repudiation isn't even a technical problem, as you can have verbal contracts too. Replying to an email is totally fine way to enter into a contract too, but something like invoices have to be signed or stamped (or both). If you request something from the government (in the Netherlands), ticking a checbox and pressing a button is totally legit and you don't have to dance around ECDSA for a single moment, because the left hand trust the right hand.

Now if somebody is conspiring with a tax officer to commit VAT refund fraud and then telling to the judge they didn't send any refund and never got any money -- it's not checkboxes and pdfs to blame really.